I’m grateful to have received the Individual Fulcrum Award from the Rutgers Research Council for my project, “Designing Predictive Descriptors for MXene Electrochemistry through Work Function and Electronic State Correlations.” MXenes offer an enormous chemical design space, but the field still lacks clear, quantitative relationships between composition, electronic structure, surface chemistry, and electrochemical behavior. This project will begin building that fundamental understanding by correlating work function and electronic states with redox activity, ion transport, voltage stability, and long-term electrochemical response in aqueous systems. I’m excited for this support to help establish a foundation for rationally designing MXenes for future advances in energy storage, separations, and electrocatalysis.